Possibility
by The Unstoppable Hug Machine
Summary: You were bullied, it was horrid. There were even times when you wanted to be a common Muggle child again, alone with your thoughts. At Hogwarts, there not many places you could find to be truly alone. So you took to the girl's bathroom...


You were a quiet child, but not an unhappy one --you were simply infinitely interested in the world within you and much less so the one around you. You were the only daughter in your family, a mediocre but well-respected clan in Muggle circles. Your parents were both professors --your mother taught philosophy and your father taught history.

Your mother fretted --she always fretted; there must be something wrong with you. You weren't interested in playing with the other children. You weren't interested in Emil Eriksson's Bright 'n Earlies, an expensive line of educational toys imported from Finland, which your mother had quickly bought for you when you hadn't learned to read by age three. After all, she'd learned to read by age three and she couldn't see why you'd be any different. And yet you were _quite_ different, and you much preferred to play with whatever you could find that was not meant to be a toy --twigs, thread-spindles, discarded broom-straws. Like a damn cat, your father said. You were an odd one. Still, it didn't become entirely apparent how odd you were shortly before your ninth birthday.

It was a lazy, humid late July afternoon and you were out in the garden. Somehow, you managed to give a small toad a pair of colorful, functioning butterfly wings. A rather impressive feat for any child, never mind on their first magical showing! It felt absolutely normal to you, somehow. Proudly, you brought your handiwork into the kitchen to show your mother, who went white faced and limp at the sight of it. Before she could lunge for the phone --it seemed she wanted to talk to anyone but you about the fluttering little toad, there was a knocking at the door and your mother saw it fit to send you out of the house as the strange man that appeared on the door stoop explained exactly what you were.

Hours later, the man left and your mother and father called you back into the kitchen. Your mother was no longer white-faced and limp, and your father was especially calm. They said it made sense. You could tell they had spent hours talking about you, conferring with their respective expertise and fitting it into their world-views, making sense of the wizarding world and its place in history and philosophy. There was a sense of relief in your parents, that day.

You, however, were happy and excited. You'd never felt much like your parents, after all, and weren't particularly keen on following them into the same mediocre, but well-respected path of academia. You scarcely slept for weeks, listening for owls and the whistling of brooms through the night sky. Of course, the letter didn't arrive until you were eleven and by then both you and your family had become quite used to the fact that you had magic and would be going to the finest magical school in all of Europe, despite how absurd such a notion might have been a mere two years ago. Still, your heart sang when you saw the Hogwarts seal. It meant possibility, above all.

Like all Muggle-borns, you marveled at your introduction to the wizarding world, so well-hidden and yet absolutely pervasive to one who could seek it out. You gaped like a tourist at first visit to Diagon Alley, lingering too long in too many doorways, transfixed by the enchanted window displays and streetside charm demonstrations.

And when you approached Hogwarts Castle, you were entirely sure you would burst. It stood so regal against the darkened sky, far more regal than any of the countless castles your father had brought you to on over years of summer holidays. Somehow, you held together and took your place under the sorting hat as all of your classmates would do. You hardly knew what it meant when the ratty old talking hat rang out, unhesitatingly, RAVENCLAW! But you were quick to learn that it was precisely where you belonged. You could talk to other Ravenclaws like you couldn't talk to anyone before --about your deepest, strangest curiosities. They were interested in what you had to say. There were more people like you at Hogwarts than probably anywhere else in the world, but nothing could match the kinship you felt in your common room --and what homesickness you might have felt as a first year was offset by the deep, existential conversations and silly, supremely nerdy riddles and in-jokes brought up in your common room. For the first time in your life, the people who surrounded you were more interesting than making twigs and bits of twin dance. For the first time in your life, you could talk for hours.

That changed, though --suddenly, jarringly during your third year. It was puzzling and utterly school-wide. Girls became more girl than they'd ever been and boys became more boy than they'd ever been. You were practically the same as you'd always been, though perhaps your Muggle-born awkwardness was brought out a little more often. This turn of events was anything but good for you. People called you stupid, ugly, fat. Nobody had ever called you these things before and didn't know what to do. It was as though you'd contracted some foreign wizarding disease and you didn't have the antibodies to fight it. You suddenly came to hate the school that had become your home. Even sweet, clever Olive Hornby, the girl who'd once been your bunkmate and in all respects the best friend you'd ever had, was suddenly hateful and petty. She even teased you about your glasses, as if you could help being a little short-sighted! Okay, perhaps you could, but the idea of magically regrowing your pupils still made you feel a bit squeamish and it really wasn't anybody's business anyway.

But you were bullied, and it was horrid. There were even times when you wanted to be a common Muggle child again; you wanted to be quiet and alone with your own thoughts. But at Hogwarts, there were very few places you could find to be truly alone. So you took to fleeing to the bathroom. You tried to be subtle about it at first, sitting in the stalls and waiting until you heard the toilets flush and the people leave before you let the tears start. But the people became crueler, and finally you were reduced to running to the bathroom, scarcely hiding the oncoming rush of weeping from passing professors.

One day.

That's all it took to change your fate. Some people spend years working, sweating, striving to change their fates, but you hardly did anything at all. You heard a boy exactly where a boy ought not to be, in the girl's bathroom. You opened the door to inform that he was exactly where he ought not to be, and that was it.

Dying could have been the end of you, but then you were never one for eliminating possibilities, and death seemed to be rather resolute when it came to eliminating possibilities. So you stayed on. It seemed more appealing and perhaps you weren't quite ready to let people like Olive Hornby continue their reign of terror. And when people like Olive Hornby left Hogwarts, you stayed on.

It was boring and you were sad a lot of the time, but it was mostly alright.

It was decades before the next time a boy came into the bathroom, but this time he really was a boy and you thought he was actually kind of cute.


End file.
